NASA/SOFIA Star Shades in night time orbits for permanent eclipse 2.0

December 18, 2014

This post is a continuance of nuclear powered spy sats in night-time obits for permanent eclipse 1.5. here we discuss using the NASA/SOFIA airborne observatory in conjunction with two star shade spacecraft in Molniya orbits. Another spacecraft would be in super synchronous orbit.

All 4 spacecraft would need to ion powered so that future occultations could allow for SOFIA airborne observatory the star shade to maneuver into position.The two Molniya spacecraft would have a perigee in the sunlight so to allow for both spacecraft and aircraft to be in darkness most of Apogee.We Would Need a second spacecraft with a perigee over the daytime northern hemisphere.

The object here is to occult astronomic objects with earth orbiting star-shades or oculters so that SOFIA could maneuver under tha shadow for a few seconds to collect data

I have a plan for spacecraft in darkness for large part of their orbits ; A small fission reactor with the SFR radiator inside the spent stage fuel or oxidizer tank, the tank ullage gas is Argon or Xenon as described here,